My first takeaway from Oppenheimer is that history is usually more complicated than we realize. Secondly, history is personal. How many private conflicts are at the core of major historical events? We’ll probably never be able to completely answer that question, but Oppenheimer gives us a glimpse into one incident in history, the building of the atomic bomb, and one personal conflict, J. Robert Oppenheimer vs. Lewis Strauss.

To be honest, as someone unfamiliar with the personal stories of Oppenheimer and Strauss, I found their conflict quite confusing until the end of the movie. But after 2.5ish hours of science-y jargon I didn’t understand, philandering/sexuality I didn’t need to see, and some actually interesting historical elements such as the construction of Los Alamos and the testing of the atomic bomb, I did manage to grasp that at some point Oppenheimer had embarrassed Strauss so Strauss wanted some kind of vengeance. And since McCarthyism and the Red Scare followed closely on the heels of the end of the World War II, the environment was pretty conducive for all sorts of people to find themselves under suspicion for all sorts of things they may or may not have actually done. I understood that much at least.

Why This Film Might Win Best Picture:

With its historical focus, Oppenheimer is more traditionally appealing to Academy voters than a film such as Barbie. It is detailed, complex, and cinematographically interesting–and it contains some rather stellar performances from Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. Furthermore, I think it is good to wrestle with the reality and morality of events of the past, events that we may previously (and consistently) have been taught to view in a certain light. Again, the complexity of reality is often overlooked, misunderstood, and/or lost to time; and Oppenheimer offers us a chance to re-look, re-think, and re-discover an event most of us do not fully comprehend. I think that people in addition to myself may value another chance to consider the ethics of a nuclear world (and hence, might reward a movie that invites us to do so).

Why This Film Might Not Win Best Picture:

By the time I got to the end of this movie (and boy, was it a long time before I got to the end of this movie), its focus on the Oppenheimer/Strauss conflict started reminding me of Amadeus, 1985’s Best Picture winner, which tells the story of the rivalry between composers Mozart and Salieri. However, where Amadeus establishes its genius rivalry from the beginning, Oppenheimer dawdles a bit with its physicist conflict, distracting us viewers from this rivalry with long sections of Oppenheimer without Strauss. This made an already smart film that much more confusing.

That being said, despite the choppiness of this film (most of the scenes are short and jump around chronologically), it does seem to be the frontrunner at most award shows this year; and it has already collected a decent amount of hardware. I think this weekend’s SAG Awards will give us more clarity about whether Oppenheimer is the film to beat at this year’s Academy Awards or if its past success is just a loud flash before movie oblivion.